television for serious readers. >> in this weeks public for search with that we bring you david rubenstein, best selling author, businessman and philanthropist. he was co-finance cochairman of the carlyle group, the world's largest and most successful private investment firm. in spring 2020 he was joining us at the reagan library for in-person event for his new book how to lead.

with the covid event that was not able to happen. we reached out. during today's conversation he shares have the book is published some of our nation's greatest minds to explore the inspiring story of america including conversations madeleine albright on the american immigrant, ken burns anwr come walter isaacson on innovation just to name a few. we invite you to enjoy our virtual program with david rubenstein, two from our leadership academy of office during a conversation by reagan foundation institute executive director john heubusch. >> it is a real privilege to be with david rubenstein this morning, who has written some remarkable books. i think this is your third, david, "the american experiment" is outright? >> that's correct. >> a real, real terrific study

of some americans have been successful across so many fields, and what i loved about the book first to say, david, is it seems a synopsis of a number of the interviews that you have done in the past years of these fine americans. i just have to say it was a real treat but when i saw the title "the american experiment", here we are as a nation 230 some odd years old, and yet you, come te story that you are come to find to this day as an experiment. why is that? >> when the country was great it was an experiment. there never been a country create a whole thought this way and the experiment that the founding fathers gave us was a representative democracy. nobody really good last very long. thomas jefferson was not at the constitutional convention while

we should do every 20 us we should reinvent the couch because he didn't think any country could live that long for this country would live that long. the truth is we have lived for 230 gears and when you think about it while we fed stress test, the most obvious one is civil war, , we have survived al those things and my fear is we had certain genes that are part of our body politic that make it possible to overcome these things and really the story in the book is about how we overcome some stress tests and how we have survived. we haven't yet achieved everything the founding fathers wanted but we've made a lot of progress i would say. >> in fact, on the concept you introduce in the front of the book david, you talk about the 13 genes of america that you identified. one of them was freedom. i've often wondered, it seems if you're a student of civics, with

every right for example, our bill of rights, there should really also, a responsibility or an obligation to i wonder why the founders didn't create a bill of obligations or a bill of responsibilities right next to the bill of rights? >> nobody is really suggested that at the time and maybe we should have but as you probably know, at the casa to convention only the last minute was a suggestion to be a bill of rights and james madison said we don't need it because the states give you the rights in their constitutions. later to get the ratifications it was recognized with probably need a bill of rights and help trap the bill of rights with the sole responsibility so you're correct. i guess they're only responsibility as a citizen you should be a law-abiding papers but we don't have any responsibilities, you're correc correct. >> one of the concepts you talk about in the book is we are a nation of immigrants, no doubt about it. i wonder though if you feel like

in the modern day at least the last decade have we lost how we, as americans defined what it is to be an immigrant? i say that in part because of the concern upon many that we don't have southern border and there's a no difference betwen what might have called illegal alien and undocumented immigrant. immigrant. there's semantics around that that seem to destroy the concept of what americans have thought about as being an immigrant. >> our country nooses anybody can show up. in the early days of the country anybody could show up. there were no passports and visas. we brought some people here who didn't come voluntarily, slaves. recently that aside for a moment people came voluntarily didn't even need to register. you just showed up. then we began to change that. in the 1925 we had real constraints of what it took to get into this country and from

1925, 1965 we made it difficult to get into the country. from 65 on we we made it a little easier. what you suggest is correct. one thing is legal immigration. the other is illegal immigration. some people have been upset with so many immigrants coming illegally they kind of lump them together and you don't want any immigration. if we don't immigrants will not have bright young people who are really working hard. many immigrants in this country by by the people who built some of our greatest companies. think about this with 46 million immigrants in this country now, 46 my people born elsewhere. 40 million for people who are the sons or daughters of immigrants. the country has a large percentage of people from immigrant population. without it i don't think we could do all the things we've done but i do worry that the southern border has become so porous that we have lost a sense of what a legal immigrant is versus an illegal immigrant and we of lump them all together and we say we don't want any

immigration. >> i know it can be a complex topic and i'm looking to get into politics that i'm not looking to get into politics here at all. are you supported as we see, the interest on the nation, trying to attract those with particular skills or to help the country grow versus all, you happen to have a familial relationship with the person, come on in. you have you on that? >> the current immigration to disability which encourages people to certain skills, intellectual skills were capabilities and people that have relationships here. we get about 800,000 naturally citizens a year and as you know get to take a citizenship test, have to pass and many people pass it to study for that, funded born americans have a hard time passing the test when you're giving it on a volunteer basis but that separate issue. it is the case we tend to

attract very talented people now. this is an interesting phenomenon in terms of attracting people. some of the most talented people in this country are people who came from abroad. it is said one-third of the companies in silicon valley are run by people were immigrants from india. there similar stories as well about other countries. we need these people and i think if we didn't have these people we would be like most of the countries where you just have relatively steady group of people but they don't have the same initiative. the concept in the book i talk what is the american dream is one of our genes. people are born in this country and often live up to the idea that can arise from nothing and come up to something great. i believe in the american dream. it turns that many people don't believe in it. the people believe in it are ironically immigrants. they come to this country because they think they have a chance to live up to the american dream. many people born in this country

now don't believe it so much. >> just faceting when you say those that might come from outside america seem to have at least modern day more confidence in a country than those born in america. >> you told me earlier you were married to a woman who is from italy. so is she an immigrant to this country? >> she is. a legal immigrant. she became a u.s. citizens of years ago. >> so she took a citizenship test and presume wishy pastor. 90% of the people who take a passive. why did she come here. why didn't you go to france or greece or germany? >> she's from sicily and i'm sure you know something about the island but boy, she looking for opportunity because there is no opportunity there as far she was concerned. >> that's what often people civilly come to the trait, it's a land of opportunity and we

been wanting to let people come in over the years and some of her most famous entrepreneurs and a right in the book about one person who rose up with madeleine albright, she was an immigrant and she is one of the two immigrant to begin secretary of state. the other was henry kissinger. in our constitution if you're an immigrant you cannot be president of the united states but you can have any other job there for some reason founding fathers were nervous and immigrant might be king of england or something i don't know. >> on the book i think you have 27 interviews there. this -- you interviewed i do probably hundreds perhaps thousands of people on your show on bloomberg and pbs. it seems in some respects you have this incredible blessing because of your stature, your history. you can probably interview just about any person that you choose

to. but at the same time it's a little bit of a curse because it's probably difficult to determine when you write a book like this who to narrow it down to. >> yes. i always like to say it was the publisher because i did have another 20 interviews ready to go into the book and the publisher says they can only be so many pages. sigh said everybody didn't in a book, my publisher, it's too bad the publisher didn't want you in. the next time i will do it. it is a difficult thing. in this particular case without regard for one or two people in and some advance publicity came out and it turned out we didn't get them in the final version so it's kind of embarrassing some of asking to talk associate is not in the book. >> i've written a couple of books for simon & schuster and you're right. when you can blame it on the publisher for sure. >> very few people you can blame something on these days with icann in trouble but you can blame things under publisher

because they're used to it. >> that's right. january 6th, we will start michael beschloss, one of the images in the book, you would he have a great conversation about january 6, incredibly sad day. i want your take on the impact of that day, nations around -- what is impact on the world? how have you looked at the united states as result of that? >> as we talk to the witches he did his past 9/11 and that but he remembers when they were on 9/11 decision but remembers when do when president kennedy was assassinated or widower when ronald reagan was shot. but he remembers that. people will always member widower on january 6th because unless anybody was watching tv and saw this right and you couldn't believe. the amazing thing about it is that people around the world were in more disbelief and we

were because around the world people said this is a banana republic kind of thing. how can the capital of the united states be invaded? is a most anything i've ever seen and it literally my job was open for hours as i was watching this. i regard it as what i call a stress test, a really big stress test of democracy and to dedicate the book to the public servants who protect our democracy and i'm really large referring to the judges. there were 65 lawsuits filed and 65 lawsuits thrown out of court because only fraud in of lawsuits was a fraud and brings us lawsuits in my view. i admire some things that all of our present done and trump did some things that i think maybe you could say these are good ideas. in this particular case i think it was a mistake to say the election was stolen. i received was in a board meeting with somebody, on a board with al gore. we were on the board together

world economic forum to allocate them as think about it and i said wait a second, he lost that election by either one supreme court vote or 534 votes in florida when we look at it. he never asked anybody to washington to riot. he never said the election was stolen. he just basically upon come with farm with his life and it was a sad situation what happened on january 6th and it really made me think that tears were coming down eyes of the statue of liberty because here we believe in freedom and we believe in people exercising the right to vote and here it was challenged in ways i think was inappropriate. >> if there's one thing about that date i guess it certainly proves the fact that we're still an american experiment, does it not? >> yes. the experiment is one that i can't imagine for example, ronald reagan, had he lost an election and he ran for president, he ran for president three times.

to make times he did make a come the third time he did make and then he ran for reelection. when he lost one time is taking a run in 60, didn't quite announce you funny, didn't quite run and then of course in 1976. he didn't complain. he didn't get better. in fact, he actually embraced gerald ford in 1976 that he didn't call them names or anything like that. he had an amiable a building about them that we sorely miss in politics today. >> we sure do, we do. you interviewed ken burns, another of your subjects. how can you not watch a ken burns product and not incredibly impressed? he's covered so many topics effort the when she spoke to him about was his incredible document on the vietnam war. i wonder, david, are you feeling now as you did during the divisiveness in america over

vietnam, two radically different situation but information at odds with itself in the same way? >> i think it's much, much worse now. it's a difficult contrast. we lost 58,000 many women in vietnam so you can't compare those deaths with the interval skirmishing with having now but in vietnam i do think there were efforts to bipartisan agreements from time to time. we still have legislation in the 1960s and 1970s that was bipartisan. today in washington i partisan -- bipartisanship doesn't exist. virtually, only democrats or republicans have. it's a sad situation when it worked on capitol hill and 1970s bipartisan legislation. i think the situation is much worse than it was in vietnam. vietnam unity with life-and-death issues every day and it was divisive. if you lived during that time you know it was awful for the

country. but we did come to get a bit afterwards. now though i don't see anything that's going to bring us together anytime soon. even an issue that should unite a set of it is good to deal with, climate change, that isn't uniting us and some the other thinks are not uniting us. the reasons our are money ih more important than ever before. social media is much more important. people -- i think people now are afraid of, afraid to be bipartisan. >> i have a theory that it seems like in modern-day it's difficult for americans ever come together. on the left there's incredible terrible crisis and that's a sad state of affairs. >> right now i hosted a lunch, sorry, dinner, every month marlis for methods of congress where i interviewed as doing. my first book was about this. these dinners are ones that members would like because nobody can see the meeting was summoned from the opposite

party. there's no press and nobody knows about it. that's a good thing we don't have a lot of in washington now. when ronald reagan was president he bitterly agreed, disagreed with tip o'neill on many subsidy issues but did have a drink at night and they could be friends and want to disagree politically it didn't regard each other as devils incarnate today you can see this devil incarnate kind of you. it's a sad situation. >> it sure is. david mccullough, your interview of him on his book about the wright brothers, what a great interview. i've read about you previous to this and previous to reading your book that you are cheerleader for the social sciences. i almost could see you smiling when you interviewed him because he is describing the wright brothers as couple of guys who did even graduate, i don't think they went to university. but they had a liberal arts

education and figured this thing out called flight, right? >> they didn't have any aeronautical degrees come no college degrees. the operator bicycle shop in dayton, ohio. david mccullough says what they had was they grew up with books. the father had a lot of books in the house and they were social science books and read them and they read them and their vegan and would say that's how they succeed when everybody else failed. >> just amazing. i have to say i've not yet read his book but i'm going to because in reading your interview within, what an incredible movie i think that would make, the story of the wright brothers. >> when you think about it the wright brothers were people that had no money. basically spent $1000 to present men can fly and land safely. they have the public relations agents and with a proved they could do it nobody in the tape believed in. they had to go to france to show people they could do it and only

when their success in france they come back year. it's in a credible story and david tells with great enthusiasm. it's really good book. >> it really is. judge sotomayor. i had a chance to meet her a couple of years ago and you interviewed her. what a marvelous woman. you talked with her about a topic really of central importance to you, that's civics education. in it though i don't know if it's part of the interview or not but you coined a phrase come maybe i've just been ignorant of this, but you were interested in patriotic philanthropy. do you own that space? who else is involved in this? tell me why you are interested in it. >> i i did coin the phrase for better or worse. i was trying to say patriotism that reminds people officially an heritage of this country.

i found when i read historic document and put them on display it was many people know more about her history and when i i would pick up and say mount vernon or monticello montpelier the washington monument i would try to get people to visit these sites begin in the people and more about history industry if you don't know history are likely to repeat the mistakes we made in the past. i have encouraged people that assigned to give a pledge to do more in this area and it's an interesting phenomenon. 95% of the philanthropy that i'm involved with and i signed a given pledge and giving away all my money, 95% of my money goes to medical research in education and scholarships and so forth. 5% goes to what goes to article patriotic philanthropy but it gets 100% of attention because if i get cancer research money that's not news but if i put ten mangoes to fix washing my all of a sudden people talk about it. i knew when i die my ob tree will say this man saved the

washington monument or something which i didn't really do but anyway that's interesting that's what i'm going to be remembered for i suspect. >> i hope you have a lot of copycats because it's a marvelous, marvelous thing and the nation hopefully thank you for everyday it wakes up. >> thank you very much. >> david blight, you spoke to him about his work. he is i guess the world leading authority on frederick douglass. i get the sense in it you focus in on all of these various struggles, whether it's you mention i think gay rights, women's rights, suffrage, the vietnam war, civil rights, immigration, native americans and all the rest. that's the chapter that convinced me, i saw that as the

american experiment. here is a nation that is constantly struggling, it is a story of struggle, is it not? >> it is. we have this rhetoric of thomas jefferson that all men are created equal. his great medic but, of course, you wrote but when he wase owner and really when it was all white property men are equal more or less, i guess. we have taken that rhetoric though and it was amplified really by abraham lincoln in the gettysburg address and we said that's what we should be like. we should everybody equal, equal opportunity. we use this rhetoric of the founding fathers to give us a dream of what we can go towards and we've been instructed t there. for example, take sexual preference. there's a big chapter in there about that fight. it's hard to remember this but it was true that in the 1950s or 40s, and if you were gay you could be fired for being

gay, , not readily engaged in connecting think of just for being gay you are fired. sometimes put in jail. just amazing that with this kind of situations and obviously we live through the civil rights revolution and it's hard to believe before 1964 there was no ability to have people eat wherever they want to eat or shop wherever they want to shop. it was incredibly difficult environment in a situation. we have needed perfect yet but clearly we have made progress. that struggle is one where many people gave their lives for the struggle and many people really fought hard to make these changes we sought ways to go but we made a lot of progress for short. >> sure. do you see an inherent conflict or tension between this struggle for equality and capitalism? >> i put it this way. capitalism, that word is not in the declaration of independence and is not in the constitution. this is the economic construct

that is made this country so successful economically. interestingly, when people get wealthier and easy other people getting wealthier, they want to purchase it and everyone certain rights rights and freedoms. when you are, subsistence level you don't really think about the right you might want that you just want to stay alive. but when you relation on enough money to stay alive you want to get a better life, have rights to vote, the right to have whatever sexual preference you want or not be racially discriminate against. so yes, the wealth of our country has made it such that people have time to think about the struggle for human rights which we want in this country. and very, very poor countries they're more worried about substances as opposed to all the things we are now worried about. capitalism has made it possible for us to worry about some of these things. >> i don't know i can't recall if you interviewed her for this particular book but i know i've watched you interview warren buffett before. one of the most striking acts

that i see in my lifetime was a member picking up the paper and reading warren buffett had decided he was going to give away at least half of his accumulated wealth. give it to the gates foundation. you are an expert who can answer this well for me. when you document so much wealth oftentimes there's pleasure in giving but there's also philanthropic acts that sort of thing. it seems to me like one of the most selfless acts of any american history to say that all of this hard work and wealth that i earned i'm going to transfer the power, the authority, the ability to someone else who knows how to do it better than i. was that not a remarkable thing? >> it was so stunning that bill and melinda gates when they were told about it sat down and cry.

frequently warned buffett was going to given this amount of money in trust them to do it. i asked one did what the deposition to be renamed? he said no. so it was a selfless act. one buffett for most of his life was that focus on philanthropy but he realized he got us are nation had all his might come with you going to do with it? he doesn't want to spend the time giving it away. he likes making the money so we gave it to people who enjoyed as bill and melinda gates do, getting away the money. i thought it was a smart warren buffett kind of idea that many of the people wouldn't have thought of. [inaudible] incredibly talented musician who he represents jazz in america today. i'm sure of that. there's some line that you quoted from him in which he talked about louis armstrong and

he says he was such a genius that he could lie about how great he was and still not be saying enough. i just thought that come what an inventive thing to say. >> interesting he points out an interview at one point was growing up he thought louis armstrong was more or less uncle tom sager but as he got to know louis armstrong he realized how talented he was and how smart he was angela came to admire him. the interesting thing about him is that he really thinks that jazz is about life. if you can understand jazz you can understand life and he's made his life to educate people about jazz so they can get the same pleasure he handed sam have gotten out of it. >> something else. of all of the people that you interviewed for this book, a number of them talk about passion, the concept of passion and how important it is for success. i wonder if, do you feel that

passion for something is something that develop some hard work, or is it simply discovered after repetition? >> i don't think anybody comes out of the room and says i have a passion for this or that. i think your life experiences it's the case to a very passionate about patriotic philanthropy. i got there when i see my 60s not my 30s. you find something like you really enjoy and want to make it part of your being forever. in your own case for example, what you most passionate about when you were a teenager at of those the same things are passionate about now? in my case i changed and not passion about other things and i now because of the age of that, i'm 72, i realize that i'm going to be passionate about something like edited quickly. i'm racing to finish going to get these things done before my brain collapses. >> i know. in fact, i read an interview with you in which i think i

guess you just reached the age of 50 and you look it up and like okay, the average white male lives to be 81. the clock is ticking. it's time to get going. >> to be very serious about it, many people don't live as long as you and i have lived. the average life expectancy in the united states is now roughly 80, but i would say that people if you're bored and i can have a life expectancy was only 49. at some point this body that you had your whole life, at some point some part and will say i'm checking out and you know from your own situation some parts of the body may not work all the time nor the way you want and you have medical issues. ..

how important in your mind is humility to success? >> in the book i did on leadership i said humility is a great virtue i think great leaders have it we know great leaders are very a grant but they're not great role models, i don't imagine caesar the great or alexander the great was humble or julius caesar was humble, those are not the role models you want somebody like mandela to be a rosen model i would say the of ronald reagan he was self-confident and he could make fun of himself and when you have self replicating humor, it means you have self-confident but you also have humility and you know you got there by law i think humility is a great virtue which is unfortunately not one that many

people have too the degree that i think they should. >> it's my favorite characteristic of someone who has reached the top, i very much agree. biographical question about you, how important were your parents and family growing up. >> we were growing up and you have the parents that you have, you kinda say these are good to be the people that are going to teach me or they're gonna prevent me from trying to do what i need to do, in my case parents were not high school or college educated, they had very modest jobs he made seven or $8000 a year, they gave me the thing that warren buffett had said, the most important thing you could get from your parents is unconditional love and only child you get unconditional love my mother would say it was pretty good she would tell me

that and i was one of the great pleasures of my life, making your parents proud, i tell people all the time try to do something that makes your parents proud and honor your parents as i tell people it's a lot easier to honor them when they're alive and when they're not around, if their parents are alive try to honor them and call them from time to time and tell them what you're doing and try to make them play your life, that's one of the great pleasures of my life until my peers passed away a few years ago. >> he went to law school, became a lawyer, practice law and the law firm, went on to work at ascetic committee on constitution. from there you went to work on the domestic policy council staff, how is it with a career like that, did you just wake up one morning and say that's it

i'm going to be interested in business? >> to be honest it wasn't quite that way i was not that good at some of the things i was doing, your friend ronald reagan won the election against us in 1980 so my services and governor weren't wanted and then i went to pakistan to be very serious, i was not a great lawyer i was a reasonably good law still student but not top of the class i was not a supreme court clerk so i would've been a mediocre lawyer and not of been great, i did not enjoy it and i hear young people all the time you can only succeed at something really well if you love what you're doing nobody one a nobel prize hating what they do. so i did not love practicing law and mild client didn't love practicing law either, i got lucky. most people that start firms when 99% of businesses fail, i got lucky we made it work and i made a lot of money and now i

decided to get back to society for my good fortune. >> okay there is humility. had you just been investigating a couple stocks on the side, there had to be something that said to you i pretty good at this. >> to be honest i did not have any background in investing but i had read about phil seidman who was secretary of treasury into leveraged buyout that was very successful and i said why can't i buy people that know how to do it and i'll do some rigor work for them but nobody wanted to do that and ultimately i recruited people that knew something about it and we got lucky that i was not an investor, i'm a person that raise the money, recruited the people, had the strategy and i had people that knew the day-to-day nuts and bolts of how to invest i got credit for being a good investor but i really was not in my next book is going to be about the art of investing i maybe one of the greatest

investors in the united states and they will tell people how to invest and how they did it and i hope people enjoy the book next year. >> great, i'm going to read that one. you had a fabulously successful life and things going over just fine, thank you. the deal must be a path with an interest in you but you in the position you are having interest in interviewing them, where does that come from. >> will happen, actually, when people would come to the events they would be paid high speaking fees former president or secretary of state and some were not great speakers and paid a lot of money. so i would start interviewing them and i would make hillary clinton funny and people seem to like it so i put in the back of my head and i did then the same thing the speakers came in and they were boring and i said let me interview them and then

bloomberg saw, the reason you enjoy it you get to meet minimum people and you learn about people's lives and you prepare for this interview in the course of doing it you learn about something and when i was a young boy my mother said don't be a busybody don't ask all these questions, i was only asking people questions and intellectual curiosity about everything so maybe it comes out, to be a good interviewer requires humility some bad interviewers are arrogant and they tried to tell people how brilliant before they get the chance to ask questions you don't what about the interview by letting the interviewer to all the talking and also if you're intellectually curious, it will come out in the interview, i think i'm intellectually curious, one thing i'm intellectually curious and maybe my mother would call it being a busybody. >> you have strength as an interviewer that i really admire

just as you just said you of course understand who is an interviewer and his been interviewed but you meet with some of the most successful people often involved in some of the most complicated things and your questions are as simple as you would ask a man on the street, did you come up with, how did you figure that out. >> it is not something involved, i'm always interested in things, i always remember albert einstein said if you can't explain something in one sense, you really do not understand it, i try to ask people questions that i'm interested in that i understand what they're doing, i do try to intersperse humor from time to time and i interviewed oprah winfrey she said i'm not a great interviewer, i'm a great listener and she reminded me that great interviewers listen to what a person says and then a

playoff and if you do something humorous i never make fun of anybody else to make fun of myself but it works out to formulate for example in your life you've done a very good job running the reagan foundation but you did not go to school to think you were running the reagan foundation but you been there 12 years so you obviously have a skill and you know how to do it in their something that was natural to you the same thing with interviewing, how happened it i will work out. >> to segue from that a few questions came to my mind as i was reading the book and i'm gonna put these two very simply i might seemed like all questions but i'm going to ask them anyways. >> usually rubinstein questions. >> your comes a rubinstein questions, what is more important to success leading and listening or speaking and writing? >> that is a tough question nobody's ever asked me that before because i think you should have both of them, most people do not do a lot of public

speaking, i tell people, you should learn how to be a good public speaker for this reason, people are influenced if you want to be a leader by people who write something while the influences them or talk well, he was a gifted communicator as he was known he was a really good public speaker, how did he get that way because he practice, he took every speaking engagement he could get in the more and more you do it you give them credit and for years i've taken every speaking engagement no matter who it was so i could learn how to speak and now i can make speeches without notes and i have ways of doing as ronald reagan did. knowing how to speak is very effective in learning how to read is one of the great pleasures of life as you probably know 40% of the people in this country are functionally illiterate, if you cannot read you're not likely to enjoy life and the pleasure out of so much what is out there, i can't distinguish between the two you

can actually influence other people what is more important to success? curiosity, the power of observation. >> i think they are related in some ways, he wrote a great book about leonardo da vinci in which he says how could anybody be as curious as leonardo was intellectual curiosity so i think the powers of observation are somewhat related, i think intellectual curiosity is a great thing being able to observe is to, what is it about the comedians that make them so funny and they go back and describe it. there into the related and very

important. >> i will try some other one what is more important to success as you found in your own life and those who are smart or hard work. >> no doubt about it, hard work. >> there's a lot of smart people who are doing nothing these days, they are brilliant, when you went to school i don't know if you were first in your class but whoever was first and it wasn't you, what happened to them, there was a lot of brilliant people i met in junior high and high school and some of them haven't been around for that much, it's hard work, nobody ever got anywhere just by basically walking around and not working hard, if you don't want to work hard, you're knocking to get great, but you're not going to get very far, there is no doubt hard work is much more important. i hire geniuses and fire geniuses, it's hard to manage a genius not so much so that the

gonna put in the time to learn a craft and know what they're talking about. >> you probably not fired a lot of hard workers, i don't know okay hard work is on the list what is one other quality that is important to success above and beyond hard work. >> lock, you make your lock, if you set your house all day you have to make contacts and look for opportunities so people who are successful, their humble because they realized they had a contact that made something or an impression on them or they found an opportunity that somebody opened the door for them but they had their own locks many ways, it is very important but if you leave aside that hard work, successfully due

to the ability to get other people to follow you. everybody is trying to convince other people to do something in the end in politics and business and you get that skill by learning how to communicate in learning how to write and most important leading a life that is one other people will say this is an example of somebody i want to follow, lead a life that others will follow or do action the others will follow you and the people will do that people follow other actions where they follow anything else, someone that they admire. >> i'm going to have my kids watch this interview. how is it that people like yourself and you're not alone, there are hundreds, tens of thousands i'm sure of individuals like this that are remarkably successful, not only in their tradecraft the and other areas of life, it's almost

the way they're able to live ten different lifetimes at a single time, you have mastered that, how is that possible? >> i wouldn't say i mastered, most people who have a skill are probably good at one thing and then they try other things but sometimes, when i was younger i would see somebody great in baseball, green football, great basketball, grating golf they were more attractive to women and girls they were very good scholars. in the end you have to focus on what interest you and what you could do the most with the talents that you have and i think in the end nobody is really great at everything, nobody. also if you have no failures in your life, you're going to be in trouble, there were some people in government that had the wonderful resumes that i would've lost but they never feel to anything and when they met a roadblock, they could not deal with it you have ten

failures in life and setbacks and that will make you stronger, i had setbacks and it made me stronger and i got lucky in many ways. >> you practice or observe the fundamental principles with time management. >> i'm not good at time management because i basically worked too much time management is probably something you should be better at than i am. i do have a view that i try to do many different things and then i try to allocate time, for example today as we talk i have interviewed christine for my tv show and tonight all interviewed justice breyer for another tv show, i'm gonna make a speech to hong kong tonight by zoom and i'll make a speech to investor conference, i would you see it in later and i do many different things, what you have to do is prepare jim baker said to me and his father said to him prior separation prevents core

performance. prior preparation prevents core performance. that always stuck with me anytime i'm doing these things i always prepare and make sure i'm not just winging it so it may appear to people watching us and i'm reading the interview to prepare for it. >> as you obviously did you prepare for this interview, i see. >> i work for elizabeth dolan is like a tennis match you better get up every morning ready to play your best game. >> she's a very talented graduate. >> that is right. >> let's figure in american history, what do you most admire. >> in the end the person who's a most impressive american was abraham lincoln he kept the country together, he freed the slaves later then many people wanted, in the end he had a sense of binding the country together. the terrible reconstruction period of time probably would've

been much better had he lived enough but assassinated but holding the country together and giving people a role model and with democracy anteriorly for all, nobody is in his league in my view. >> well put, to this day is the most admired american president for good reasons. one or two books would you suggest that someone just getting their start, it doesn't matter in business or sports, any field of endeavor, what book, most influenced you or one that you would suggest is a must read for someone out there ready to achieve success. >> it's a book you're going to read and get through, it depends on what you're interested but the most important thing is a book that you will read and want to learn from the book, i intend to read a lot of books because

i'm doing interviews, when were doing interviews you read the book. , the most important book that's ever been written in the english language is the bible, if you read the bible you're likely to learn lessons and likely to learn about history and be more commercial than other one book, if i was in a deserted island and had to be there for a year i would take the bible if i can do that i would take my own books. >> do you have a favorite historian? >> again it's like asking which of my children are my favorite so i'm going to be careful, i am close to darcy and david mccullough is exceptional as well it in my view two of the ones not only great historians but when you interview them then such an excitement about the subject matter it leaks out at

you and you cannot imagine how exciting it is to interview david mccullough because they're so wonderful at not only writing the book are doing the research but explaining that's part of being a historian explaining it to people. >> they indeed have a passion. monuments, given your patriotic philanthropy i think i know the answer to this, i'm going to ask anyways is it okay to tear down monuments in order to make a point, shape the future, is history something regardless of what the history stands for should it be destroyed? >> interestingly the. meds are built by slaves, maybe we should tear down the p remains but obviously that's tongue-in-cheek, my view we should remember the good and bad

of history, if there is a monument to robert e lee why is there a monument, because he was a slave owner or he fought for the confederacy in a lost cause or his humility, what are you trying to do, in many cases these confederate monuments were built not to honor these people for what they did and fighting for the south but they were built in the early part of the 20th century to basically be a pro-segregation antiblack message, in that case it's not good by george washington, he was the slaveowner should we tear down the washington monument, now he did many things that was the most important part of his life, the declaration of independence but is slaveowner yet to take the good and the bad but explained to people why you are preserving it, for example the mountain is a symbol of the confederacy should we blow up the mountain, i don't think so i

think we should tell people when they go there this is why they built it and this is the mistakes that some people made but make sure that we learn from the mistakes that people make. >> your book is the american experiment, also the term of ronald reagan's book in american exceptionalism, there is a view by many in america has indeed been blessed, god has blessed america, do you believe there is a divine support for this unique country called the united states. >> that's a cup located subject and i would answer it and say america is unique country, nobody is rushing to leave this country to emigrate to china, nobody is looking to leave to emigrate to russia people are tried to get into this country not leave the country it's an exceptional country, american

exceptionalism means to some people that we should take what we have here and put in other countries because were so good at what we do we could and put it to afghanistan or iraq and we learned it's not that easy to do i do think america is an unusual country and what i say to the planet, the planet itself came about in a very serendipitous way 10 million miles closer to the sun or 10 million miles further away this planet would not exist in terms of light being on it. same thing is true they came together to create the united states and if two or three was not there or other ones were there, we would not have this unique country. i don't want to say were better than any country, but i know i would not want to live in any other country. >> okay, just a few more questions, would you still what appears to be an evolving center in china? >> the united states is been of

the biggest economy since 1870 and since world war ii we've been technological military power for sure. china because of its population size is rivaling us in the economic area and geopolitical, i think over the next hundred years or so china is going to be our major competitor, there is no doubt about it nobody has a population or the capabilities that they have, i would not bet against the united states for sure, but we have to recognize china is a competitor to a great extent and we have to recognize that and be prepared for that that does not mean we cannot have ways to cooperate, if you go back there history it's very rare the two biggest economies got along all the time, there's always been competition and in his book you see the challenge, he deals with rising economies with challenging the power in the context that was created, right now we have a challenge in china that's been going on for quite some time.

>> all make my last few questions about philanthropy and no doubt is seems like the next 30 or 40 years or 50 will be about philanthropy. >> if i can live that long i'm happy to live a couple years even. >> you talked about how you had an interest in making transformative gifts, defined that for me. >> it makes a real difference to be describe i don't have the money a bill gates or were in buffet, they had staggering sums of money and i encourage them and everybody else who has staggering wealth, wealth of 50 billion or more or 100 billion or more instead of giving away that money a much larger sums if you have $100 billion and you give away a billion dollars a year that sounds great but you won't be around to see most of it given away, you have to give away much more in my case for standards,

can i start something that would otherwise get started, to connect finish something that would get finished, and my going to have an intellectual interest such as being more than just a check writer and for them i likely to see some of the progress in my lifetime, those are the standards i have, you can about the standards sifting through request, i don't have a foundation i make all those myself and i responded to inquiries that are serious and i just do it that way because i want to be hands-on. >> i think the other point that you make in addition to be transformative as it needs to happen now, i would occurrence this amongst any. >> do it now they could see the benefit, the ancient pharaohs were buried with their wealth because they thought they needed an afterlife there is no evidence you need that in the afterlife, maybe you will go to

heaven and maybe you see what your executor is doing with the money but most likely you're not quick to be able to know what the executor is doing so well, do it now, don't wait forever, do it now. >> what gives you satisfaction succeeding in business are succeeding in giving. >> succeeding and giving is much more pleasurable. my mother called me up and said david i'm proud of all the money that you made when i started giving her the money she said i'm really proud of what you're doing and when she passed away the only thing she had news clips about me were the ones about my gifts, not about my business because that's what she thought was important giving away my money, is much more pleasurable to help other people. what is it about humans that makes us difference another species on the face of the earth humans have a sense that they're willing to help people not just in their families or their tribes, they're willing to help other people, it's what makes us so unique and so different than all the other species on the face of the earth. >> was the most important lesson that you learned in giving.

>> the most important lesson i learned, it's a great pleasure to give, you don't have people thanking you all the time, you're getting the pleasure and thanked me all the time, don't give me celebrations, you're getting the pleasure by getting the money, i also learned don't expect perfection in your gift in the pleasure should be more than enough if you want to solve a problem get involved, don't just write a check, put your time and i've been involved in a lot and i think i have more impact by giving my ideas and time than just giving my money. >> well put. last question you talked about patriotic fully enter peak, you had the memes to make a big difference in a number of places, what would you suggest

the average american the person of average wealth, how might they be patriotic. >> building at the peak is arise from an ancient greek word from humanity it does mean rich people writing checks you can love humanity by volunteering. when he came here he said everybody is too busy to talk to me there out volunteering the time is the most valuable commodity, give your time, find something you're passionate about, if it's a neighborhood of that or estate group or citigroup, something you're passionate about that could make a difference so you can say when your time has come that yes i made a difference in is justified and on the face of the earth by doing something or the organization or that cause. methods are gonna get in their

lives. >> i appreciate your time. >> i'm always here to look at the oval office. >> congratulations a great job even for the reagan foundation in the reagan library. >> thank you, best about to you. >> thank you for joining us for the virtual programming of that we have this conversation has inspnous peoples history, the

united states and the recently published evolution of immigrants. >> roxanne dunbar ortiz i want to start with our conversation today with a quote from your most recent book not an issue to be regrouped, in the book you write the claim that the united states is a nation of immigrants and aversion of u.s. nationals. what do you mean by that. >> in the past, before the terminology, a nation of immigrants arose